Articoli con tag “Test”

Nikita Mazepin topped the second and final day of the final in-season Formula 1 test of 2019 at Barcelona.

Mazepin, having his first runout in the 2019 Mercedes after a private test programme in the ’17 car, set a best time of 1m15.775s on the final afternoon using the C5 Pirellis.

The Formula 2 driver completed a series of performance runs in the afternoon, eventually breaking the 1m16s barrier on his final quick lap with 25 minutes remaining.

His time was only 0.264 seconds off fellow Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas’s fastest time of the test overall, set on Tuesday.

Toro Rosso driver Alex Albon prevailed in a battle for second place using C5 rubber with Ferrari’s Antonio Fuoco in the final half-hour.

Albon initially jumped up to second with around 30 minutes remaining before Fuoco displaced him 13 minutes later.

Albon then immediately reclaimed the position with a lap 0.205s quicker to make sure of second, before causing a red flag that ended the day with nine minutes remaining when he stopped in the vicinity of Turn 10.

Charles Leclerc was fourth fastest in the Pirelli test Ferrari, using unmarked development tyres.

Renault test driver Jack Aitken was sixth, 1.846s off the pace using C5 rubber on a series of performance laps in the closing stages of running.

Haas driver Kevin Magnussen’s fastest time from the morning’s running, using the C3 Pirellis, put him seventh fastest after he failed to improve in the afternoon.

Racing Point simulator driver Nick Yelloly moved up to eighth in the afternoon, and lapped 0.361s faster than the Williams of Nicholas Latifi.

Dan Ticktum completed the top 10 for Red Bull with his time on C3s, 1.077s quicker than McLaren morning driver Oliver Turvey, who handed the car over to F2 race winner Sergio Sette Camara in the afternoon.

Sette Camara managed only 19 laps, setting the 13th-fastest time of the day 5.790s off the pace, before stopping on track with a technical problem and causing the only red flag of the afternoon other than Albon’s stoppage.

That put him behind the second Pirelli test car, the Racing Point of Lance Stroll.

Sebastian Vettel ended Formula 1 pre-season testing at Barcelona with the fastest lap time, set before Ferrari and Red Bull lost out on valuable track time in the afternoon session.

Vettel completed 110 laps before stopping around 90 minutes into the afternoon session at the exit of Turn 2, similar to the position in which Kimi Raikkonen’s Alfa Romeo pulled off at the end of the morning’s running.

Ferrari confirmed later in the afternoon that an "electrical issue" had caused Vettel to stop and the fix would take too long for him to return to the track.

It continued a run of Ferrari problems after Vettel’s crash on Wednesday meant team-mate Charles Leclerc could do just one lap that afternoon, and Leclerc had lost time earlier in the week to a cooling system check.

But Vettel’s lack of track time was not enough for him to lose the top spot in the final day of testing, as Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton fell narrowly short of wrestling the fastest lap from his 2017/18 title rival.

Hamilton progressively climbed up the timesheets after taking over from Valtteri Bottas for the afternoon.

He initially made small improvements on Pirelli’s unmarked compound before switching to the faster C4 and C5 tyres.

Hamilton’s first flyer on the C4 was good enough for sixth before finding further time to jump to third with a 1m16.628s effort.

A switch to the C5 tyre allowed the Mercedes man to go second, before he then lapped in 1m16.224s just before the final hour in a time that was just 0.003s short of Vettel’s benchmark.

Hamilton was able to complete 61 laps, over double Max Verstappen’s total of 29.

Verstappen missed just half an hour of running in the morning following Pierre Gasly’s huge crash on Thursday before Red Bull identified an gearbox issue that meant the Dutchman did not run in the afternoon.

Red Bull’s lack of running was compounded by Mercedes completing 132 laps across its both drivers, with Valtteri Bottas taking third with a best effort of 1m16.561s on the C5 tyre.

Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg was fourth after completing the majority of his early running on the harder compounds and a switch to red-walled tyres meant he could set a best of 1m16.843s on the C5 late on.

McLaren’s Carlos Sainz Jr retained the fastest time in Formula 1’s second week of pre-season testing at Barcelona, while Ferrari only managed one further lap after its morning crash.

Sainz set his benchmark time of 1m17.144s within the first two hours of the morning before going on to complete more laps than any other driver with 130.

His leading time never looked close to being threatened until the final 20 minutes of the day.

Racing Point – which again lagged behind in the mileage stakes – bolted a set of C4 tyres on Sergio Perez’s car, which he used to go second with 1m17.842s lap that trailed Sainz’s best by 0.698 seconds.

Perez’s late effort was enough to depose Sebastian Vettel from the second place he had held onto despite his crash meaning Ferrari covered just 41 laps.

The crash had occurred at Turn 3 during the morning due to a mechanical problem.

Ferrari initially confirmed the SF90 would not be seen for "several hours" and Vettel said the damage made finding the cause of the crash all the more difficult.

The Italian team then spent the majority of the afternoon conducting what it called "thorough checks" before Charles Leclerc got out to undertake just a single installation lap.

Leclerc had also lost track time on Tuesday when cooling system checks had to be made, before he then handed the car over to Vettel for that afternoon.

While Perez had the best lap on the red-walled tyres, Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen moved fourth inside the last hour with a 1m18.209s effort on the C4 compound on his way to a total of 113 laps.

But Raikkonen then stopped at Turn 6 as the session ended.

Raikkonen’s best time also knocked Red Bull’s Max Verstappen down into fourth after the Dutchman had spent the majority of the day on the C3 tyre, with some running undertaken on the harder C2s.

Verstappen fell a further place when Romain Grosjean completed a C5 run in the final 20 minutes that heralded a 1m18.330s effort good enough for fifth.

Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat was seventh behind Verstappen after setting his best time on the C3 tyre, and he demoted the two Mercedes drivers into eighth and ninth.

The Mercedes pairing combined to set 177 laps after Valtteri Bottas’s curtailed Tuesday afternoon running cost Mercedes the chance to validate two different aero designs.

Bottas recovered in the morning to set a total of 75 laps and a best time of 1m18.941s, before Hamilton clocked 102 laps and marginally beat his team-mate’s lap.

Renault built on its morning spent focusing on race simulations with Daniel Ricciardo.

Nico Hulkenberg took over in the afternoon and also completed longer runs, but gradually improved his time with the mid-range C3 tyre to take a best lap of 1m19.056s.

Hulkenberg’s performance runs meant he ended up almost three seconds clear of 12th-placed team-mate Ricciardo, with the pair split by Williams’s Robert Kubica.

Kubica had continued to help Williams understand the softer C4 and C5 tyre, using the former to set his quickest time.

Toro Rosso-Honda’s Daniil Kvyat delivered a phenomenal late lap to set the fastest time of Formula 1 pre-season testing at Barcelona, while the Williams lapped for the first time.

Alfa Romeo driver Kimi Raikkonen had led the morning session, and it looked like his early time would hold for the day until just over 10 minutes to go.

But Kvyat bolted the softest Pirelli tyres – the C5 – to his Toro Rosso, and set a 1m17.704s, 0.058 seconds quicker than Raikkonen.

Kvyat had tried to beat the benchmark a few minutes earlier and jumped into second, before going one better.

Fellow late charger Daniel Ricciardo secured third for Renault, running the C4 tyre to his benefit.

The Australian had focused on long runs on the C2 tyre as he took over the car from morning runner Nico Hulkenberg, but still pumped in a rapid lap to secure third place.

While the late runners battled, the Williams remained in the pits having completed 23 laps in the hands of George Russell.

The car didn’t arrive at the circuit until 4am, and wasn’t ready for the morning session.

Russell set a best time of 1m25.625s, and that lap came with a huge slide at the entry to the final chicane, which threw the car into the run-off area.

Sebastian Vettel didn’t improve on his morning time as he focused on longer runs throughout the session and by the end he was sat in the pits as others went for the top times. The Ferrari completed 134 laps.

Max Verstappen helped his Red Bull team to rebound from its difficult day when Pierre Gasly crashed the Honda-powered car on Tuesday afternoon.

The team completed 109 laps, with Verstappen setting his best time on the C3 tyre in the morning – the same tyre Vettel used to finish one spot ahead.

Hulkenberg held sixth with his morning time, ahead of Romain Grosjean’s Haas – which stopped three times during the day.

Pietro Fittipaldi was the first Haas man to stop on track, before Grosjean halted at the start and end of the afternoon session, the latter bringing out the red flag and costing teams four minutes of running.

Fittipaldi took eighth behind Grosjean, after his second consecutive session in the car, while McLaren elected not to fit the C4 tyres to its car for a late lap as it had done the previous two days.

The team appeared later than most in the morning, completing 90 laps, and Carlos Sainz Jr ended the day ninth.

Sergio Perez rounded out the top 10 for Racing Point, on another day where it lacked the number of completed laps of most of its rivals.

The two Mercedes, headed by morning driver Valtteri Bottas, set 11th and 12th fastest times but, in typical fashion, conducted long runs. The champion team is still to use the softer C4 tyre in anger, having run on the C1, C2 and C3 so far.

Bottas and Lewis Hamilton did combine for the highest number of laps for any car, on 182 laps finished.

F1 testing: Raikkonen sets fastest lap so far, tops third morning

Kimi Raikkonen set the fastest time of 2019 Formula 1 pre-season testing so far to lead the way at lunchtime on day three at Barcelona for Alfa Romeo.

The ex-Ferrari racer became the first driver this week to post a time below 1m18s with a short run on the red-marked C5 tyres roughly half an hour before lunch.

Up to that point, Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari had comfortably led the way, and while Vettel was on track and improving at the same time as Raikkonen, his lap on the harder C3 tyre compound was no match for what his former team-mate ultimately managed.

The difference in tyre performance was stark when both drivers completed a second attacking lap, with Raikkonen losing 1.4 seconds on the softer of the compounds, while Vettel was only 0.1s slower than his previous best next time around.

Raikkonen’s move to the top shuffled Nico Hulkenberg down to third, after he’d gone second behind Vettel an hour earlier.

Renault is running without the use of its DRS today, due to the failure suffered by Daniel Ricciardo on Tuesday morning that resulted in the top flap of his rear wing coming off at high speed on the main straight and pitching him into a spin at Turn 1.

While Raikkonen and Vettel were setting the fastest times, Max Verstappen was also going quickly, moving up to fourth with a lap on the yellow-marked C3 tyres.

He fell down a place to fifth shortly before lunch, when Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat moved ahead of the Red Bull with a lap on C3s.

The top six was completed by Haas driver Pietro Fittipaldi, who caused the only red flag of the morning when his car stopped on the approach to Turn 9.

Carlos Sainz Jr was seventh for McLaren, completing only 27 laps as the team made up for a late start. It missed the first two hours of running because it was "preparing the car after some changes overnight".

Once it was on track, McLaren’s day was not without dramas, as an aerodynamic piece fell off the car on one of Sainz’s runs, and then just before lunch he spun at Turn 13, ending up in the gravel but managing to drive out of it without assistance.

There was action in the Williams garage as well following the arrival of the team’s 2019 car overnight, with George Russell completing a seat fitting in anticipation of getting out on track after lunch in the FW42.

Of the cars that ran, Valtteri Bottas was slowest in the Mercedes, but the team completed the most laps of anyone with 88.

Sebastian Vettel’s morning time ensured Ferrari ended a strong opening day of Barcelona Formula 1 testing on top, as he beat McLaren driver Carlos Sainz Jr to the fastest time.

Vettel set a 1m18.161s in the morning session on the C3 tyres – the middle compound in Pirelli’s testing range – to end up 1.783 seconds quicker than his nearest rival, Racing Point driver Sergio Perez.

While he did not improve on that time in the afternoon, Vettel did extend his lap count to 169 by the end of the day, which also left him comfortably ahead in that tally.

Vettel’s advantage over the field was reduced in the afternoon.

Haas’s Romain Grosjean was the first driver to get within one second of the benchmark time, with a lap on the C3 tyre in the last half hour of the session helping him snatch second from Sainz.

But Sainz took the position back with an impressive 1m18.558s lap to end the day 0.397s slower than Vettel.

Sainz had earlier brought out the first red flag of the afternoon when he stopped at the exit of the pitlane at the beginning of the afternoon running. He blamed a loss of power for the issue, but the car appeared to run smoothly thereafter.

Grosjean had to settle for third, but Haas had a much better afternoon than the morning. Grosjean’s car had ground to a halt entering the final chicane with fuel pressure issues earlier in the day.

After a slow start to the first test, the beginning of the Red Bull-Honda relationship received a boost in the afternoon as Max Verstappen took his tally up to 128 laps and set the fourth-fastest time.

Kimi Raikkonen kept Alfa Romeo in the top five, having set the fourth fastest time earlier on in the day. He ran C2 and C3 tyres and had been as high as second, but was shuffled back later in the afternoon.

Alfa Romeo was still one of six teams to complete more than 100 laps, despite Raikkonen’s visit to the gravel bringing out the first red flag of the morning session.

His car then stopped with just over a minute left in the afternoon, bringing out the red flag.

Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat and Perez set the sixth- and seventh-fastest times respectively, but both teams would likely have wanted more running.

Kvyat needed to bolt the C4 tyre on to set his best time, while Perez only added 10 laps to the 20 he completed in the morning, with his team finishing bottom of the laps-completed order.

After taking over the Mercedes in the afternoon, reigning champion Lewis Hamilton could not wrest Valtteri Bottas’s eighth place in the order by the end of the day, but he did complete more laps than his team-mate – ending the day with a tally of 81.

Behind the pair of Mercedes drivers, Renault had a disappointing day in terms of times as its drivers rounded out the order.

New arrival Daniel Ricciardo took over from Nico Hulkenberg for the afternoon, but missed out on beating Hulkenberg by 0.003s. He also completed 21 less laps than the German driver.

Kimi Raikkonen reckons his Alfa Romeo Formula 1 team has made a "big step" from the Sauber he drove last year, after a "very positive" start to pre-season testing.

Raikkonen has joined Alfa, which has taken over the title of Sauber’s F1 entry, after five years with Ferrari.

He drove Sauber’s 2018 car in the post-season Abu Dhabi test last year and said serious progress has been made after driving the C38 on the first day of ’19 testing on Monday at Barcelona.

"It is very positive," said Raikkonen, who finished fifth-fastest and completed 114 laps.

"Straight out [we are] not doing an awful lot with the car. [We just] try to do things here or there.

"It is very happy actually. The guys did a very good job over the winter and we have a package that we can work [with]. And we can get better.

"Everything feels normal and when I [compare it to what I] tried at the end of last year, the Sauber, it is a big step for sure."

Alfa’s return to official F1 running started inauspiciously when Raikkonen spun into the gravel early on and ended in similar fashion when he stopped on track right at the end of the day (pictured above) with an unknown issue.

Raikkonen joked that the early off was because "we never seem to learn from the winter".

Mercedes Formula 1 junior George Russell ended the post-Hungarian Grand Prix test with the fastest time and a new unofficial circuit lap record.

Russell’s first day at the Hungaroring was compromised by a gearbox problem but he hit back with a 103-lap Wednesday and beat Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen to top spot.

Raikkonen led the way in the morning before he and Russell traded fastest times at the beginning of the afternoon.

Russell, the 2014 McLaren Autosport BRDC Award winner, first hit the summit with a 1m16.050s, which Raikkonen quickly toppled with a 1m15.805s.

But the Mercedes driver was able to improve again on hypersofts to a 1m15.575s to edge Antonio Giovinazzi’s Tuesday benchmark by less than a tenth.

Russell’s effort was almost 0.6 seconds faster than Sebastian Vettel’s lap record, set last Saturday during FP3 for this year’s grand prix.

Raikkonen appeared at the very end on hypersofts but fell 0.074s short of Russell with his last-gasp effort.

Jake Dennis made it a brace of Award winners in the top three.

The 2012 MABA victor, driving for Red Bull, clocked a 1m17.012s to end the day 1.4s off the pace.

Giovinazzi completed his two days of testing in fourth place, having swapped Ferrari’s SF71H for Sauber’s C37 on Wednesday.

The Italian posted a 1m17.558s on hypersoft tyres, more than half a second quicker than regular Sauber driver Marcus Ericsson managed the day before.

Nikita Mazepin took the undesirable honour of causing red flags either side of lunch, but shot up to fifth with a flying lap on hypersofts right at the end of the day.

After stopping midway through the first session, the GP3 race winner finally emerged an hour and a half into the afternoon’s running.

He got down to a 1m18.732s on hypersofts but then stopped on track again, this time on the exit of Turn 13 and in sight of the pitlane with a small amount of smoke coming from the rear of his car.

He emerged in the last 20 minutes to vault up the order, with his final improvement coming inside the final five minutes and leaving him on a 1m17.748s.

Robert Kubica did not improve on the time that put him second-fastest in the morning, and thus fell to sixth in the final standings. The Pole’s morning effort of 1m8.451s on ultrasofts was faster than the best Williams time in FP3 last Saturday.

Lando Norris was seventh-fastest based on a 1m18.472s set in the final 15 minutes on softs, having avoided serious performance runs.

The McLaren reserve was followed by Renault driver Artem Markelov, who enjoyed multiple hypersoft runs in the afternoon and worked his way up to sixth place, ending up 2.9s off the pace after two late improvements.

Toro Rosso trio Sean Gelael, Pierre Gasly and Brendon Hartley ended up at the foot of the times.

Gasly and Hartly were conducting Pirelli tyre testing and were four seconds slower, with Gelael focusing on the team’s own programme and 3.4s off the pace.

Montmelò, 9 March – The second and final winter test at the Catalunya Circuit has now ended. Today, Kimi Raikkonen was behind the wheel of the SF71H, having recovered, after being indisposed over the past few days. He rattled off 157 laps, the best of them in 1’17”221, set using the Hypersoft tyres. Scuderia Ferrari’s programme included set-up work and a race simulation, running different types of tyre and fuel loads. This was the hottest day of the entire two weeks of testing, with temperatures over 20° and the track around the 37 mark.

“Overall, I feel we have a good package,” was Kimi’s assessment. “For sure the weather at the start of testing wasn’t ideal, but we have finished with a couple of pretty good days. The car gives me a good feeling and, even if there are still a lot of things to improve, its reasonably easy to drive and it reacts to the various set-up changes. However, no one can say where we really are, compared to our rivals. We’ll have a better idea in a couple of weeks in Melbourne and then, in general, after the first few races of the season. I like racing and I can’t wait to start.”

Over the two test sessions, the Scuderia Ferrari drivers covered a total of 929 laps (286 for Kimi and 643 for Sebastian) equivalent to 4324 kilometres.

Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen ended the final day of Barcelona Formula 1 testing with the fastest time, as McLaren and Renault both made up for lost ground on Friday afternoon.

Raikkonen’s morning effort of 1m17.221s was not threatened in the final afternoon of pre-season running, although a spate of late runs in the final hour did shake up the order behind the Finn.

Daniel Ricciardo was the first to make a big move with 45 minutes of the session to go, jumping up to second in the Red Bull on supersofts, before he was usurped by both Carlos Sainz Jr and Fernando Alonso.

Sainz did not get his day going properly until around two hours were left, after Renault had to replace his RS18’s gearbox, but went second fastest with 30 minutes to run on hypersofts.

But the Spaniard was beaten to the runner-up spot before the end of the day by compatriot Alonso, who was making up for lost time after a turbo issue caused the McLaren to stop on track in the morning and lose over five hours while its Renault power unit was changed.

Using hypersofts, Alonso posted a 1m17.981s to go second and then improved to a 1m17.784s to end the day 0.563 seconds slower than Raikkonen.

Alonso did briefly jump to the top of the times in the final 10 minutes, but had his lap deleted for cutting the final chicane.

He ended the day with a total of 93 laps to his name.

Romain Grosjean was the day’s most productive runner for Haas with a tally of 181 laps, the best of which was good enough for fifth-fastest behind Ricciardo using ultrasofts.

Valtteri Bottas took over testing duties from Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton in the afternoon, going sixth fastest on mediums and giving the champion outfit a combined session-topping total of 201 laps.

After his morning spin, Charles Leclerc used hypersofts to move up to ninth in the Sauber behind Brendon Hartley (Toro Rosso) and Force India’s Esteban Ocon.

Sergey Sirotkin (Williams) completed the top 10 after handing over to Lance Stroll for the final few hours, with the Canadian again setting the slowest of the day behind Hamilton using softs.